Command and Choice

"Nese..." Nese came to and glanced around before hurriedly asking Yicha.

"He's fine."

Yicha's mind suddenly wandered. In human customs and literature, whenever someone woke up, they were always supposed to ask things like, "Where am I?" "Who am I?" and "What happened to me?"

Apparently, those descriptions were not always accurate.

His thoughts returned to Keir's current miserable predicament.

It was difficult to find a vessel capable of containing pure energy of order. It seemed the angel would have to stay in Goodbye's stomach for a while.

All sorts of changes could happen in Hell at any moment. If the angel in energy form escaped and Yicha accidentally used him as spellcasting material—

That would actually be rather interesting.

Yicha could not help but smile.

Goodbye suddenly made a retching sound by his feet.

He reached down and patted his beloved dog's back.

"Woof!" The hellhound coughed loudly, flinging out something long and thin along with a huge glob of emerald-green saliva.

It had not been digested by Goodbye... Yicha picked it up and gave it a shake.

A brown twig, neither long nor short.

"A... gentleman gave this to me," Nese said, recognizing it as well. "A Mr. Forest." He felt as though he were talking complete nonsense.

"Alexander Hanging Ghost."

Yicha did not seem surprised in the slightest. He wiped the twig clean on a corpse lying on the ground. "I saw it from here. The basin of Fire Thunder Zhesang. Alexander Hanging Ghost's Underforest, Helajisama's Burning Soul Beach, the Grudge Worm Abyss—you teleported to the borderlands of Purgatory. That is not a good place. Not for you."

Nese nodded shamefully—this really had been caused by his teleportation error—and memorized those names.

Burning Soul Beach... It seemed the burning sands mentioned in that book referred to Helajisama.

He remembered the book.

"Have you heard of the Chaos Hell Travel Guide?"

The book was uncannily accurate. Nese even suspected that his teacher had written it under a pseudonym.

"I know it. Another day."

Yicha answered absentmindedly, not directly responding to the question.

He was studying the twig intently. After several seconds, he smiled and tucked it into his clothes. "Decent quality."

Branches distilled from the essence of Hell's forests could be used for many miraculous purposes. As an existence almost as ancient as Chaos Hell itself, even a tiny branch from Alexander Hanging Ghost could serve as the energy source for an entire large-scale disorder-field energy chamber.

And if it was made into a tool rather than used as material, its energy conductivity was five times that of gold, while its law conductivity was also first-rate.

But there was no time to demonstrate that now...

Nese spoke steadily at his side, reporting the information about the Chaos Child and several other details.

Yicha listened, deep in thought.

The information Alexander Hanging Ghost had provided was indeed important. Could it verify some of his conjectures...

Black smoke suddenly filled the air before them.

Yifomiet had not been in sight a moment ago, yet now he tore through the air with an oppressive presence, his towering form appearing before them.

Nese stopped speaking, seeming quite calm. His psychological endurance had gradually improved through a cramming process.

Sankarabi, meanwhile, turned pale. To Yicha's surprise, the hierarch had been standing quietly nearby all along, as though he truly wanted to help.

"The King of Demons wishes to see you."

Yifomiet went straight to the point, not even glancing at the sorcerer or the hierarch beside him.

"Mm."

Sure enough, after Beelzebub lost contact with him, she had taken the initiative to seek out Yifomiet.

"She says she is giving you a chance."

Beelzebub never gave demons chances.

Yicha understood at once.

"Quick." He stared at Yifomiet. "Make all these idiots leave."

Yifomiet asked no unnecessary questions. Spreading his wings, he shot straight upward like lightning and rose into the sky.

His voice resounded across the entire floating island.

"Command: Retreat immediately."

Low-frequency sound waves so heavy they made the chest tighten swept through the air like a violent gale, instantly passing over the three legions.

At the same moment, every demon soldier dropped whatever was in their hands and looked up.

Though demons differed greatly in appearance—based on their legs alone, they could be divided into four categories: none, a single-digit number, too many to count, and entirely legs—they all held the same posture at that moment.

Crackle.

The demons' multicolored eyes flashed in unison. Their differences vanished as identical scarlet flames ignited within them. Their expressions also became uniform. From above, countless red eyes lit up densely across the entire floating island.

Every face tilted upward at the exact same angle.

They were like a swarm of worker bees.

Worker bees obeying the same command.

"Command."

An innate application of energy unique to demons, equivalent to an angel's "Miracle." Its strength was directly tied to the power of the demon's innate domain.

Yifomiet, Hand of Destruction, and Asmodeus, Grand Duke of Hell—below one demon, above ten thousand demons.

His Command—

naturally reached all three armies with ease.

The demons began to stream away rapidly in the direction Yifomiet indicated, like a flood of foul sewage.

Neat, muffled footsteps struck the ground. The three tiers of floating islands began to tremble rhythmically. The demon soldiers who had been sprawled about moments ago straightened their backs if they had backs, and under Yifomiet's command, no collisions, crowding, or cutting in line occurred. Row after row, they disappeared neatly into the distance.

Very obedient. Very fast. Very direct.

As easy as moving one's own arm.

But Yicha had no time to praise their discipline.

He was concentrating all his strength on repairing the mana dome.

He stood at the center of six piles of marrowstones—three white piles supplying law energy, and three more, one red, one blue, and one brown, supplying the energy of the three major elements. A row of twelve demon god statue silhouettes was shrouded in a faint white mist, each extending a thin thread of energy that reached his body.

A storm-like vortex surrounded Yicha. Azure flames flickered in his eyes like stellar fusion.

Interlocking triangular patterns twisted into a pillar of law energy that shot from his hand and surged toward the peak of the Disaster Stone Tower that pierced the entire island. It spread like fireworks, then descended to form a new, net-like inverted bowl of mana, crystal-clear and shimmering as it slowly covered the entire Demon Courtyard.

Seeing Yicha act, Nese immediately mobilized law energy as well, trying to help cast the spell and mend the holes in the net-like mana barrier—this was within the range of spells he knew well.

Sankarabi called for the Order's members. Though none of them understood this sudden change or could offer much help, they sensed the pressure in the air abruptly rise. They all hurried over and gathered faithfully around Yicha, murmuring quiet prayers.

"Look at me," Yicha called.

The hierarch turned around humbly.

Within the rapidly spinning storm, an azure-flamed gaze met his. Then a small crystal bottle was thrown toward him.

Sankarabi caught it. Inside was half a bottle of finely polished, azure-blue four-sided pyramidal stones, each face engraved with a symbol he could not understand.

He looked up blankly.

"You have another path, Sankarabi. Your talent could make you far stronger and far more useful than an ordinary angel."

Yicha's voice was entwined with wind and thunder, vast and resonant. "Do you still wish to become an angel at any cost?"

Sankarabi drew a deep breath.

"Holy Angel."

The hierarch's voice carried a trace of suppressed trembling. "It is my destiny to welcome you. Fate brought me to your side, and I am willing to accept it with joy.

"I accept all your arrangements. If I am fortunate enough to have a choice, I hope that you and my suffering brothers and sisters of the Order may enjoy glory forever, and that light may return."

Command spell. In DND, it was an enchantment spell. In this book, it was established as an innate ability of the demon race. Only the name was borrowed. In this book, Command took effect based on the difference in rank and the willpower bonuses of both sides.